


ruling gotham from a shadowed perch

by m3owww



Series: maribat [12]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Maribat - Fandom, Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Court of Owls, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Dick Grayson is a Talon, F/M, Marinette Dupain-Cheng Needs a Hug, Marinette Dupain-Cheng is a Talon, They don't get hugs this time, a character briefly considers suicide, but very briefly, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:35:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27622802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m3owww/pseuds/m3owww
Summary: The silvery moonlight glances of his dark hair, and for a moment, the boy shifts into someone else.Another child, another boy, with dark hair, but he’s wearing red and yellow and green, and the bear isn’t a bear, but an elephant.Zitka.Talon tilts his head. What is a Zitka?--------There’s a girl in the first bedroom, wrapped in a red blanket with black spots. She’s hugging a stuffed toy in the shape of a black cat, and a picture on her bedside table shows her smiling, holding up a pink-frosted cupcake, her dark hair pulled into pigtails.The picture confuses Talon. What about it is making her feel like there is a hole in her chest, in her head, in her memories?
Relationships: Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug/Dick Grayson
Series: maribat [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1842979
Comments: 5
Kudos: 56





	ruling gotham from a shadowed perch

**Author's Note:**

> gotta churn all these snippets out of me before I can tackle the seventeen asks in my inbox :)  
> (also, gotta finish drawing something for february and finish the 2011 RHATO and the Maribat Secret Santa and Platonic November's prompts because, believe it or not, I'm actually doing that. Yeah. I know we're already more than halfway through November.)

Talon’s first mission with her counterpart is today.

Something nags at the back of her mind, insisting that she should feel… something.

But Talon stands, motionless, except for her fists, which clench into her clawed gloves, pushing into her palms and drawing blood, as the Grandmaster speaks his orders.

Kill the woman who defected from the Court, and her entire bloodline as well to make an example, to show the other Owls that this behavior will not be tolerated.

Talon nods stiffly, internalizing the orders, and walks from the room alongside the other Talon, the male one, once they are dismissed.

Something isn’t quite right, she knows. But she doesn’t know what.

Talon’s claws push harder into her palms as she walks.

The gathering of equipment is silent.

Talon thinks there was once where he loved to speak, sing, and fly. Like a bird.

He doesn’t know much more than that, and he thinks it may have never happened.

After all, he belongs to the Court. And the Court’s Talons are supposed to be silent.

The only time they fly is when they are on Missions and leap off buildings, and that is not real flying, Talon knows. 

(Though how he does, he couldn’t tell you.)

You do not fall when you truly fly. And when Talons jump, they always fall.

(Something about that makes Talon’s chest feel… weird.)

Talon follows her counterpart over the rooftops, two small, dark figures darting through the shadows towards the woman’s home.

The home where, inside, a woman, her husband, and their two children sleep peacefully.

But not for much longer, Talon knows. Their lives will end tonight.

Because of her.

A feeling arises inside her at that thought, just a tiny little whisper of emotion that shouldn’t exist. Talon pushes it down and ignores it, feeling her feet land silently on concrete and stone before pushing off again.

She is a Talon, and Talons do not feel.

Talon climbs up the building until he reaches the correct window, then waits for a sign from his counterpart. A small shift, the tiniest of sounds, reaches his sharp ears, and that is his cue to enter.

The sound of glass shattering wakes up the woman and her husband. They get out of bed with impressive speed for a human, but by the time they’ve stood, the two Talons are already in front of them, the female Talon immediately flinging forward four knives to pin them to the walls, one in each shoulder.

Talon draws one of his blades, stepping forward.

“Alaina Donovan,” He says, the sensation of speaking unfamiliar. He is not supposed to do it normally, but this is the one of the very few exceptions. “The Court of Owls has sentenced you and your entire bloodline to death.”

The knife draws a red gash across her throat before she can even open her mouth to scream.

Talon kills the man with practiced, clean strokes of her knife. 

This is not her first kill, after all. The Court has had her practice in many places.

The Labyrinth.

The torture chambers.

The room where the Owls reside, leering down at her as Grandmaster gives orders.

But this one, this mission, feels different somehow. 

Talon decides it’s probably because she is working with the other Talon. The male one.

There would be no other reason for it to feel different.

After all, Talons do not feel.

They walk, with silent steps, across the hardwood floor to the first child’s bedroom. Talon gestures for his counterpart to enter. He will take the second room, at the other end of the hallway.

The other Talon nods, and pushes open the door, disappearing. Talon continues on his way.

The boy in the second bedroom is hugging a brown stuffed toy in a terrible imitation of a bear to his chest. The silvery moonlight glances of his dark hair, and for a moment, the boy shifts into someone else.

Another child, another boy, with dark hair, but he’s wearing red and yellow and green, and the bear isn’t a bear, but an elephant.

Zitka.

Talon tilts his head. What is a Zitka? 

But the moment is over, because the boy senses something and awakens, blue eyes widening in fear when he sees Talon.

(Blue eyes… Talon thinks there’s something familiar about blue eyes.)

For some reason, Talon doesn’t like it when the boy fears him. Talons are supposed to be feared, he knows. They should like being feared.

So why is this boy different?

Talon gives the boy a quick, painless death before he can come up with any answers.

There’s a girl in the first bedroom, wrapped in a red blanket with black spots. She’s hugging a stuffed toy in the shape of a black cat, and a picture on her bedside table shows her smiling, holding up a pink-frosted cupcake, her dark hair pulled into pigtails.

The picture confuses Talon. What about it is making her feel like there is a hole in her chest, in her head, in her memories? 

She is a Talon. None of this should be familiar, other than the process of eliminating her targets. That has been practiced countless times.

But the little girl sleeps on, a content smile on her face, and one of the more rebellious parts of Talon’s brain whispers that Talon was that girl once, and that Talon should still be that girl.

Talon does not know what that means. She forces that part of her brain to be quiet. Talons are supposed to be silent.

Talon draws a knife, a shiny brass owl carved into the hilt. She turns it over in her hands once, contemplating, noting how it feels both familiar and hostile in her hands, before swiftly plunging it into the girl’s heart, giving herself no time to hesitate.

Talons do not hesitate, either. She is starting to think that maybe she is not a very good Talon.

The girl dies almost instantaneously. That gives Talon some comfort, though she does not know why she needs it.

She’s just another target, after all.

Talon exits the boy’s bedroom with a bloody knife in his clawed hands at the same time the female Talon exits the girl’s.

Talon does not comment on the way his counterpart pushes her claws through the palms of the gloves into her palms. He doesn’t give any indication at all that he notices.

He’s done it himself, on numerous occasions. The pain gives Talon something to focus on other than the Court.

No. He shouldn’t need to focus on something other than the Court. Talon belongs to the Court. Talon lives to serve the Court.

(But Talon isn’t really alive, is he? Not really. He thinks he was, once, but then there was a clawed hand putting a knife in his stomach and painpainpain and then he woke up as Talon.)

Talon exits the house without looking back, just a little bit too eager to get away.

The sting of pain in Talon’s hands helps drown out the singing in her head, insisting that there is something wrong. 

There is nothing wrong with Talon. Talon is perfect. Talon is nearly impossible to kill. She is strong and agile and fast and has superhuman reflexes and can heal from even lethal wounds. Talon can see in the dark. She can bend her body into positions that are impossible for humans. She is not broken. She is not.

(Talon’s body is not broken, she knows. But her mind? That is a different story.)

Talon is not broken. Talon is perfect. But her head, her brain, they say differently. Talon cannot let that show. Broken Talons are frozen, and she won’t be frozen again. So she pushes her claws deeper into her hands, and lets the pain drown out the voices as she follows the other Talon out the door, and back to the Court.

Talon steps under the spray of hot water in the Nest, scrubbing the dried blood of his paper-white skin.

He likes taking showers with hot water. When he stands under it long enough and the water turns his skin pink, he feels almost warm.

Almost human.

Why would he want to be human? Talon wonders. He is far more superior to the humans, Cobb says all the time. Humans are pathetic and weak.

(But what Talon cannot put to words yet, what he cannot quite describe yet, is that humans _feel_.)

(And Talon has not felt anything in a long, long time.)

Talon leans back and lets the water soak into her hair, making the weight of gravity on her head heavier and heavier.

Sometimes, she wishes it would continue pulling her head back, farther and farther, until her neck snapped at she could slip away into blissful darkness.

But death is not an obstacle for a Talon, only a mere inconvenience. 

There were very few out there who could kill her and make sure she stayed dead.

So Talon opens her golden eyes again (gold isn’t the right color, but she doesn’t remember what is) and cleans the little girl’s blood off of her hands, even though there is none. She was wearing gloves when she ended the girl’s life.

But there is blood, thick, dark, and red, dripping off her pale, pale hands anyway, splattering on the stone floor of the shower without a sound, and so she scrubs at her hands under water that is nearly boiling.

But Talon doesn’t feel a thing, her (wrong) golden eyes only seeing the girl’s blood that refuses to wash down the drain.

Cobb congratulates them on a mission well done the next day.

Despite this, despite what he and the Grandmaster and the Court all say, the Talons do not feel like it is a success.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr!](https://m3owww.tumblr.com)


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